Like 'Walking into a Dream'-- 1930s Greenwich Village

Once she arrived in NYC, artist Esther Phillips only knew that Greenwich Village was the place to go. She was intent on staking her place as soon as possible.

She bought a big wheel of cheese to live on for awhile. It took only a few days and a few trips to Goody’s Cafe to stumble upon a scene. Goody’s was “long and narrow and murky, a blind tunnel of a place, a burrow, a bat’s cave, a bear’s den.1

North of 6th Avenue, between 9th and 10th Streets, Goody’s was apparently the cheapest eats and drink, save for the infamous ‘automats’ that dispensed cheese sandwiches from machines, and where many artists got the bulk of their sustenance.

When it came to just drinks, Minetta’s was the tavern of choice among artists and writers. Bordering Washington Square at the corner of Minetta Lane and McDougal Street, it was the place to go to continue, and end the night over, the creative rants and ramblings of the day.

Greenwich Village was a haven for those creative. In the dive bars, cafeterias, and burgeoning coffeehouses, Esther began to come into contact daily with other creative souls trying to make a go of it in the big city. These places were the principle rendezvous for Villagers, and where, more than anywhere else, Esther got to know both the artists who later would make a name for themselves, and so many more others who would stay hidden.

Soon she fell into the routine of all artists of the Village. It consisted, usually in this order, of working at one’s art; searching for cheap housing (but adequate studio space); frantic searching for means to earn money to pay for art supplies, a little food, and rent; and commiserating with everyone else attempting to do all the same. Egos clashed a bit, each arriving artist becoming competition for the other, but a sense of camaraderie overrode all. The artists offered each other support and encouragement, money if they had it, and a place to stay if needed.

“Going into the Village for the first time . . . was like walking into a dream.”2 Unlike the rest of Manhattan, the Village had a life of its own, full of creative energy.

Many artists went to Washington Square Park to draw, paint, sit, and talk of art and their world. It was set in the middle of the Village--with the notorious statue of Garibaldi at one end, and Stanford White’s Washington Arch at the other. Quite the community gathering place, it many times became a point of departure for both painting excursions around the city and for artists’ collaborative attempts to market their work. Because most artists had no phones (landlines) and many also lacked consistent addresses, the park played a vital role as meeting point. When work wasn’t the priority at hand, groups of friends would embark towards a beer in Minetta’s.

Some of the Village artists lived very close to the park, in ‘walk-ups,’ second and third-floor apartments that bordered the southern edge of the Square. Artists, of course, lived with their work; these ‘flats’ had beautiful skylights that provided amazing illumination, making perfect studios…

There was an abundance from which the evening’s entertainment could be chosen—”Boogie-woogie at Cafe Society Downtown,” famous singers at the Village Vanguard, “foreign movies at the Rialto on Forty-second Street, and “dance halls up in Harlem.”3

Journals of Esther’s good friend Eugenia Hughes reveal the frolic and lasciviousness of the Village. Entry after entry detailed parties and gatherings from dusk on, through all hours of the night, until morning. One journal entry captured it simply with title “The Morning After the Night Before.”

“The ‘30s were wild, wild times,” Esther would tell two later close Village friends in the 1950s. She recalled to them the all-night parties, the nonstop comings and goings from Washington Square to taverns to flats. She affectionately described a Village of two decades earlier even more bohemian, “very loose,” one that she missed terribly… 4

THIS FANTASTIC STRUGGLE: THE LIFE & ART OF ESTHER PHILLIPS

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